Rockingham Press

Welcome to the Rockingham Press website which now has a few changes. We have the results of the Eighth Ware Poets Open Competition, judged by George Szirtes (CLICK HERE FOR WARE POETRY or GO TO PAGE 12)

One of the main changes is a separate page for the publisher’s old school — including details of the new book, HIGHBURY COUNTY REVISITED by Brian Boyle, edited by David Perman. Also information about the Old Highburians’ Association, which organises annual reunions in April of each year in London, and two very nostaligic staff photographs Derby escorts. CLICK HERE FOR HIGHBURY COUNTY ON PAGE14

ISBN 1-904851-01-0 Paperb ack 160pp £9.95

HISTORY

Our main work of local Hertfordshire history for 2005 is a ground-breaking art book. THE ARTIST AND THE ORGANIST: The Luppinos of Hertford and Ware tells the story of two generations of the famous Luppino (or Lupino) family, which later found fame on both stage and screen. Thomas Frederick Luppino (1749-1845) was a scene painter at Drury Lane and Covent Garden and spent much time sketching views of Hertford, Ware and the surrounding area — probably as material for his theatrical scenery. His grandson, Thomas William Luppino (1790-1859) was an accomplished musician and organist of St. Mary’s Church, Ware. This fascinating book — by theatre historican Derek Forbes — tells the story of their lives and relationship as well as publishing for the first time the hundred or so sketches of Thomas Frederick Luppino (four of them in full colour).

This splendid book is supported by grants from the Hertford & Ware Local History Society,Hertford Town Council, the Ware Society and Ware Town Council — and is published in memory of Adrienne Margaret Kirkby Forbes, F.C.A. (1937-2005)

ISBN 1-904851-06-1 Cased with colour jacket 124pp £9.95

POETRY

Our latest poetry collection is The Thin Places — see below. Although we receive no grants whatsoever from the Arts Council of England (having been turned down three times in the past year) yet we do have other poetry collections on the horizon. One is a de luxe Chapbook, Poems Antibes, by William Oxley and illustrated by Frances Wilson. Another is a collection of very accessible, “Palgrave-type” poems by Mercer Simpson, entitled Early Departures, Late Arrivals.. Both are due out in the early months of 2007.

The Thin Places is the third Rockingham collection from the American-born poet, anthologist and publisher, Judi Benson. Judi is currently Writer-in-Residence at the Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary, in Oncology and Palliative Care, working with patients, carers and staff who wish to express themselves through writing. She contributed to You Again – Last Poems and Other Words, Ken Smith (Bloodaxe, 2004). With Agneta Falk, she co-edited The Long Pale Corridor: Contemporary Poems of Bereavement (Bloodaxe, 1996); with Ken Smith, she co-edited Klaonica: Poems for Bosnia (Bloodaxe, 1993).

“Judi Benson’s new collection,” writes Tom Pow, “encompasses many different geographies Lincoln escort – from that of a London bookshop to Italy and the Balkans. She crosses borders between the present and the deep past in the powerful ‘Burying the Ancestors’, but most significantly in a series of memorable elegies for her late husband, the poet, Ken Smith, she maps out the territories of the living and the absent.” CLICK HERE FOR POEMS BY JUDI BENSON.

ISBN 1 904851 10 X — Paperback, 64pp. £7.95

Rockingham is privileged to have published four books by Lotte Kramer — Earthquake and other poems, Selected and New Poems 1980-1997, The Phantom Lane … and now Black over Red. In many ways it is Lotte’s best book — an opinion not only from her publisher but also many friends who have seen it prior to and immediately after publication. Yes, Lotte Kramer is a Holocaust poet — the memories, the returns and reunions are here as vivid as ever — but she is so much more. In Black over Red (the title comes from a painting by Mark Rothko) she ranges widely over European culture, the English countryside, over friends and family. “Her poems appear simple,” wrote Anne Stevenson, “but their lucidity is that of deep, unmuddied waters.” CLICK HERE FOR POEMS BY LOTTE KRAMER.

ISBN 1 904851 02 9 — Paperback, 64pp. £7.95

Moniza Alvi has said of Wendy French’s first full collection that it is “packed with risk-taking poems, cut close to the bone.” Wendy is the former headteacher of a hospital school for disturbed pupils and there are poems about them, about children in Africa and about the death of a dearly-loved niece escorts in Cambridge. There is also a wonderful sequence of poems introduced by fragments of the poems of Sappho. Wendy French is the author of two pamphlets: Sky Over Bedlam and We Have A Little Sister And She Hath No Breasts (from tall-lighthouse). She has also edited two Rockingham anthologies of hospital children’s poems — Dog Bark (for the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital School) and What’s Your Problem? (for the Guys Hospital Evelina School). CLICK HERE FOR POEMS BY WENDY FRENCH.

ISBN 1 904851 03 7 — Paperback, 88pp. £7.95.

Published autumn 2004 and selling well at home and abroad, Of Birds and Men is the remarkable collection from an Iranian poet. Mahmud Kianush is a poet, novelist, critic, the founder of children’s poetry in Iran Bristol escorts, as well as a broadcaster and translator (incl. the anthology Modern Persian Poetry for Rockingham). Now he has gathered the English poems he has been writing since settling here from Tehran in 1976. Of Birds and Men : Poems from a Persian Divan uses the traditional forms of Persian poetry — including poems addressed to birds — to comment tellingly on the modern world. Here are poems about dictatorship, political hypocrisy, casualties of war in Bosnia, the magical lure of money, jet travel and the fate of the Dodo. CLICK HERE FOR POEMS BY MAHMUD KIANUSH

ISBN 1 904851 00 2 — Paperback, 80pp. £7.95

Other recent poetry publications include two chapbooks from members of the Ware Poets — In the Lee of the Land by Julia Smellie, and A Stampede of Seconds by Jane Evans. Also still available are the collections by Frances Wilson: Rearranging the Sky — David Perman: A Wasp on the Stair — Sally Carr: Handing on the Genes—Danielle Hope:The Stone Ship— and Jane Kirwan:The Man Who Sold Mirrors. All three have been enthusiastically received by other poets and warm reviews are now coming in. On pages 3 & 4, you will find poems by Wendy, Sally, Danielle and Jane — as well as Mahmud Kianush, Frances Wilson and David Perman.

On the Ware Poetry page you will find the results and winning poems in the Ware Poets Open Poetry Competition 2005judged byJudi Benson.

BIOGRAPHY AND FICTION

BIOGRAPHY is another interest. After the success of Bryan Hewitt’s The Crocus King: A.E. Bowles of Myddelton House and William Oxley’s autobiography entitled No Accounting for Paradise, we now have, Scott of Amwell: Dr. Johnson’s Quaker Critic by David Perman. This has been selling very well especially in America. See the Biography page.

In 2006, we hope to publish two further works in the same — or similar genre. A Woman of the Twentieth Century will tell the life story of the poet, dramatist and short-story writer Lotte Moos. Lotte, who is now 95 years old, experienced all the turbulence of the last century — in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, America in 1939 and Britain ever since. The other prospective book is an English translation of the “Shelter Stories” of Feyyaz Kayacan Fergar — these prize-winning stories are affectionate, slightly surreal, observations of Feyyaz’s fellow South Londoners as they sheltered from the V1s or “doodlebugs” in 1944. Our provisional title is Cockneys against the Buzzbombsand the translators are Ruth Christie and Selçuk Berilgen.

ON OTHER PAGES YOU WILL FIND …

— Poems from our anthologies in translation of modern Turkish and Persian poetry — both highly recommended since there are few comparable anthologies in print. And also some Jewish poetry.

—- Rockingham books about Hertfordshire history as well as the books we distribute for Ware Museum and the Ware Society — see Hertfordshire History.

—- the complete list of Rockingham books in print — see Stocklist;

—- how to order Rockingham books— see How to Order;

—- the monthly programme of Ware Poets as well as details of competitions — see Ware Poetry;

—- the new page of our publisher celebrating Highbury County Grammar School 1923-67 — Highbury.